Social Networking

Well, up until now, social networking has not been a part of my life...at all.  But, I feel the wave of change flowing over me and I can definitely see the value in it.  So, I will give it a shot and begin to explore the wonderful world of networking via technology.  I have joined MACUL Space and LinkedIn and will build a Personal Learning Network using these wonderful spaces where people are openly sharing information in a quest to better themselves and the lives of their students. 

And, I do plan on incorporating social networking into my classes, both on campus and online.  Some social networking is available in our current LMS, but students are only required to participate in the discussion boards.  This is a good space, but I would like to develop this area of the online classes.  I am considering requiring participation on blogs, using Google Docs for assignments and requiring group presentations through some type of open source.  I think this is REALLY important, not for learning my topic, religion, specifically, but because it helps train our students in 21st century skills.  They will be expected to have basic technology skills as well as collaboration skills when they graduate and seek employment.  I think I do a disservice to them if I don't get them introduced to 21st century skills and at least dabbling in them.

I want to create blogs to record reactions to events relating to religion in our world.  There may be several categories, such as holy sites, holiday celebrations, religion in the news, getting to the bottom of religious conflict, and such.  Within these blogs, I'd like to run tweets that record the reaction as they happen.  Later, a more formal post can be placed on the blog itself.  Through an activity of this sort, I hope to encourage students to think critically about religion, while it is happening in real life.  I'm interested in blending learning with life as opposed to separating learning from regular life, which seems to be a natural consequence of our education system in the U.S.  If students have the ability to tweet while "experiencing" something related to our topic in class, then I want to capture that moment and intensify the learning and bring it to all members of the class.